"You're telling me nothing as to why we should go up against something with such a positive public image." They're straight out of nineteen-fifties movies, with gray metal faces and steel bodies. It doesn't help to have old stereotypes reinforced this way. None of them say the Diogenes Robots are giving people the wrong idea about the nature of the coming machine intelligence. We did a hell of a lot in that direction." "You've looked at the file of releases we already put out, this past year?" "If we highlighted the differences between the Truth Machines and the Diogenes Robots, it would help raise awareness of the Institute." "These robots are huge in the news," I said. They expected to hear nothing like the history of productivity-monitoring technology from my lips: one of my favorite topics, though. My appearance threw people off, at times. Heavy-boned myself, and thickly built, I suddenly imagined myself a henchman, drumming up a job. Her large, black eyes pinned me up where I stood in my long, gray coat, in front of her desk. I had known days when she let emotions shape the flatness of her face. "Or should I call it an outright attack?"Ī big-boned woman, Alexi Thomas projected gravity and solidity when she leaned forward, elbows on the blotter, her fingers intertwining. "The purpose of this promotional event you envision?" she said. I had gone in to see Alexi first thing that morning. "Jessica is going with us, remember? And daddy knows better than to ask such a silly question, doesn't he, Jessica?" Jenny was doing well at sounding amused and cheerful. "Jessica's mum has a dinner date with a very nice man," said Jenny, in Jessica's direction. "Jessica," I said to my daughter, "why don't you ask mommy if she wants to have supper tonight with daddy?" "They're hot in Japan right now, you know. Her hair had gone blonde in the year since the end of our marriage, in the same way her face had gone hard. "Must you make a message out of a toy," said Jenny. "If one child learns something in a class, there will be ways to have all the other children learn the same thing, too, without their ever being told." "People will be the same way, someday," I said. "But all the pieces know, once you teach that one." "You only need to teach one piece," I said. It unfolded into a turtle of blue plastic, with the same flashing eyes. Jessica ran into the kitchen, where a ball-shaped piece sat atop the counter. Then it danced in place with wings flapping, flashing its eyes a few times before folding itself into a pyramid again. It stood on pencil-lead legs, clucked, and repeated in a scratchy, amusing voice the word Jessica spoke to it: "Boogers," she said. It jiggled, turned, and unfolded to become a chicken. In the living room, she activated the green one shaped like a pyramid. Her black-coffee curls flew as she scattered the shapes through the rooms of Jenny's apartment. Little Jessica caught on to the toy first thing. I frowned, then smiled as well as I could, remembering the hundreds of broad-spectrum eyes dotting the fronts and backs of these robots. When I stepped aside, it went on its tin-can way. Empty slit of a mouth.Ī tin can, pretending to be a head, perched atop a bigger tin can pretending to be a body, with twin columns of smaller tin cans pretending to be legs underneath. Nothing shined inside the hollow cage of the lantern. The Diogenes Robot, six feet tall, stood on the sidewalk, one arm upraised, the other stiffly at its side. People walked to each side of me, oblivious: they had seen it a hundred times. "I am looking for an honest man," the robot said. ![]() There, a row of restaurants shined their signs toward me: Armenian, Japanese, Thai, American Sub, American Burger, American Pizza, Irish Pub. The wadded paper went into my pocket as I took the stairs to street level. The salesman for the Truth Institute tells a fib. Maybe I had worked too hard, the last few months. Some wise old rat would come along, then, and sniff the oils my fingers left on the wrinkled paper, and next morning the gray thing would be perched on my stoop, the wad in its teeth, its nose pointed upwards like an accusing finger. I wanted to crumple the paper and leave it on the subway with the gum wrappers and magazine inserts. The Truth Machine said I had, and that was that. I had fallen into a controlling mind-set, the numbers said. I thought I could smell the ink, even above the dank, fume-laden air of the tunnels. The prototype of the Truth Machine we used in the office printed out slips of yellow paper like this one, with a number series followed by a gloss at the bottom. ![]() Leave your jet lag or whatever the hell behind." "Justin Abling, what's eating you?" said the note from Alexi, her handwriting as bold and forthright as she was.
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